In the information processing apparatus, the information such as text characters, graphical images and the like may be displayed on the display screen (LCD, CRT, etc.), and a cursor may also appear together with such information, wherein the cursor may be moved to any particular location on the display screen, and may be used to select any particular menu item for display. The information processing apparatus may be equipped with a cursor operation device, such as a set of cursor-movement keys (arrow keys), that, when activated, causes the cursor to be moved in any desired direction on the screen. As the cursor is moving in a particular direction, the current display may be refreshed (for example, the cursor moves to another location, the screen is scrolled, and so on). The cursor-movement keys on the apparatus have the respective functions assigned that, when be activated, cause the cursor to be moved in the respective directions. Specifically, the cursor-movement keys usually include four arrow keys that allow the cursor to be moved in four directions (UP, DOWN, RIGHT, LEFT). The direction in which the cursor is moving and the speed with which the cursor is moving may previously be set for each of the arrow keys.
When the cursor has to be moving largely to a target line because a great number of lines, from which a particular line must be selected by the cursor, appear on one window, it is desirable that the cursor should be moving quickly to the target line. To respond to this desire, the cursor may be moving quickly in several ways.
(1) To depress a particular cursor key and hold it depressed. The cursor may be moving more quickly.
(2) To keep a particular cursor key depressed while holding Shift key depressed. The cursor may be moving more quickly.
(3) To keep a particular arrow key depressed, and then keep the reverse arrow key depressed. The cursor may be moving more quickly.
Any of the above ways has the problem in that the user cannot control the cursor moving speed as the user desires. The cursor may be moving too quickly, or the cursor may be moving too slowly.
The small-sized information processing apparatus, such as hand-held portable computers, portable MD players, portable CD players, MP3 players and the like, may include, in addition to the cursor-movement keys, a rotary operation device (also called a jog dial) that helps the user operation with the higher efficiency. This rotary operation device has attracted the attention of the inventors of the current application, who have discovered that the cursor may be moved as desired by using the cursor-movement keys in combination with the rotary operation device. The present invention is based on the above discovery.